A journey into the rabbit hole with the occasional random rants and mundane musings.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Water, water everywhere...

...and not a drop to drink. This quote taken from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet from the early 1800's. I'm a big fan of water and want to keep abundant clean water around from many years to come. Tomorrow is World Water Day. A day where we can begin to be more conscientious of our water usage. Below are a few tips on how to conserve and make good use of the water we have. Most are obvious but I included them just in case they're new to you.

1. Shut the water off when you're not using it. For example, when you're brushing your teeth. Only turn the water on when you need to rinse your toothbrush.

2. If you have indoor plants or herbs, set out buckets to collect rainwater and use that instead of tap water to give your plants/herbs a drink. Or if you don't have a place to collect rainwater, for some reason, use what's left in your cup when you have a drink of water that you didn't finish. Don't throw it out...use it!

3. If you've got a leaky faucet/toilet, get it fixed.

4. Spend less time in the shower and use a low-flow showerhead.

5. Watch how much water you're using for washing clothes. If you're not putting a bunch of clothes in the washer, don't select "large load".

5 comments:

Yes I try my best to conserve water. Like a couple things you said above-I don't have the faucet running when I brush my teeth, I don't put my clothes on "large" load when there's not a lot, and I take the fastest shower in the house (and I'm a girl!).

I also feel very strongly about recycling. I always wanted to touch on that subject...but if you're interested in that too, I bet you'll beat me to it!!!Take care & good post~

Eve - I haven't posted anything yet on recycling. I recycle but not in your typical way. I tend to find new uses for things as opposed to throwing something out. A lot of stuff ends up in craft projects or things for the house. We don't have a good recycling program over here so I don't recycle in the conventional way. How are the recycling programs on your side of the state?

Good tips, always. I've found that having a well instead of city water makes a difference, too, in my awareness of how much water I use. With the city, I just imagined lots of pipes and reservoirs and so on--hard to know where your water comes from and how much is there to use. But with a well, it's much easier to think of this one hole in your yard and how much water it might hold based on rainfall. So I do turn off faucets much more, for example. We also piped all the downspouts back into the ground, mainly to protect the foundation of the house, but I feel it also helps direct the water back to where it's needed most.